"I don't see any tracks leading out of there. What they're up to, I don't know. But this is all fishy to me... it's too early in the day to stop at night. And if the dwarves are in the keep, where are their lookouts? Our men look like they got caught by surprise, we best make sure we don't fall victim to the same kind of ruse."

Martin moves inside the courtyard, examining the bodies.
As he's shifting the bodies looking for anyone he might know, he says
"It does look a little fishy, I have to admit. We should at least poke our head inside the great hall for a second. Also, maybe they were attacked by the halfling birds. Those could have flown off already."

Martin gradually makes his way towards the main tower, and examines the door.

Gareth draws his bow before entering the bloodied keep. Upon entering, he scans the room, paying particular attention to the staircases. He doesn't say anything, but his eyes burn with desire to destroy the guilty parties involved.

Before entering the tower, Pygrado draws his shortsword and also takes one from a fallen guard.

In a horse whisper, he asks:
If this is what the guards came to do, we're too late. Though this is an awfully small outpost to be of tactical significance, unless I'm missing something here. Any idea what they'd want with this tower, Gareth?

Are their any shields on the dead bodies which aren't broken? MWK or not?

"Well, we might as well go up and get a view of the landscape before moving on. Best be careful though, don't know what could be lurking."
Martin says as he pulls his sword and carefully steps over the bodies piled at the door, making his way to the staircase moving upwards.

It's a fort. People build them to protect themselves, items or strategic positions.

You do know that Silverkeep has a number of outlying forts staffed by your fellow guardsmen that serve to protect local citizens from bandits or wandering monsters.

Moving upstairs, you find yourselves in a well-appointed room. A rich rug and an expensive-looking desk dominate the southwestern corner, while a well-made bookcase and several boxes have been placed around the room. A table and two expensive-looking stools stand in the southern part of the room. This room has three more corpses in it. Two of them wear the armor of the silver guards, while the other (H32) wears the uniform of a mithral guard captain. They all wear chain mail and the silver guards have longswords. The captain has a nice-looking shield that bears the arms of Silverkeep (masterwork heavy steel shield), but his weapon is missing.

Mithral guard officers are normally not posted to frontier settlements lightly. You suspect that this fortress may sit atop the exit of an escape tunnel designed for the royal family and their closest allies. These tunnels are a closely-held secret known only to the mithral guards and those closest to the royal family. The tunnels are a well-hidden part of the extensive network of mines that runs deep beneath Silverkeep and its surroundings.

Martin get a +8 circumstance modifier on this knowledge check, while Caladrius gets a +4 bonus on it.

Martin and Caladrius:

You recognize the dead mithral guard captain as Aventus Arracino, a master swordsman and former commander of the king's personal bodyguard. You heard a rumor that he retired to a frontier post about six months ago.

Heal:1d20 + 6 ⇒ (6) + 6 = 12 How long do I think that he has been dead?

Martin kneels down and checks the pulse of the body. "This is Aventus Arracino, he was a master swordsman and the now former commander of the King's guard. This is no trifling matter for him to be lying here dead."
Closing the eyes of the dead and hoisting up his shield Martin says,
"We will honor him in death as we did in life. I have a hunch about this tower. If I'm right, we best thoroughly check the basement. Specifically, we are looking for any hidden passages. As always, be careful for we know not what we might find there. "

Gareth is almost starting to look a bit desensitized to all the dead people who he's been encountering in the past few minutes. "Well, we'll have to do what we can to avenge his death. I'd offer a burial to all of these guys, but, well, I think we've got bigger walls to scale for now."

He starts to fiddle around with the particular box. "So... charts and maps, huh? What kind of maps would they take from this part? Does it have anything to do with your hunch? What do you think we'll find?"

Martin shifts his gaze from the fallen Mithral guard to Gareth and says,
"Hmm, nothing to do with my hunch, but maybe it's got something to do with the war in general. We should make some haste in exploring the basement though."

Also, can everyone go through their profiles to make sure that you have your current gear listed and that your stats reflect what you have equipped now? We'll be in combat soon, and I just need to make sure I have your correct stats for it.

Caladrius has been investigating the tower and thinking as though there were something important that he could not quite remember. At Martin's mention of the basement, however, he seems to suddenly remember. Basement! I know why they took this tower! He bolts down the stairs to the ground floor, beckoning the others to follow. When you catch up, you find him performing his odd exercises, which are clearly important enough to take a minute out of his mad dash to finish.

Caladrius remembered halfway down the stairs that he had not performed his invocations for the day, due to the difficulty he had remembering about the basement of the tower. Draconic Knowledge and Endure Elements for everyone are back up presuming that he has about a minute to cast the invocations.

You venture down into the tower's basement. Unlike the upper levels, this level seems almost pristine. Apart from the corpses. From the stairs, there is one door directly ahead of you, two to your left, and one to your right. They are made of heavy, light-colored stone.

Exploring the area reveals that the two rooms on the left are well-appointed bedrooms, with the northern one being fairly opulent. The room directly ahead of you is also well-appointed, and appears to have been the commander's quarters. The door to your right opens up into a large barracks area with two doors to its south. One of these doors opens up into an armory/storage room, while the other reveals a number of large wooden tubs.

The barracks room has a number of bunk beds around its periphery. It also features a large, wooden table. The armory holds a number of chain shirts, a couple of breastplates, and a number of swords and daggers (5 daggers, 5 short swords, 5 chain shirts, 3 breastplates, all medium, non-masterwork and nonmagical).

The commander's quarters hold a desk, a small bed, and a dresser. On the desk are a number of books, mostly manuals related to tactics, swordplay, and geography. The northern bedroom has a massive bed and a fancy table with an equally fancy stool tucked beneath it. It also features a highly ornamented desk with a chair atop a massive ornamental rug. The southern bedroom has two double beds and a table with stools.

No dirt has been tracked in from above, and there are no visible footprints left after you descend the staircase. Even the blood from the corpses has been cleaned away.

Gareth walks down the staircase cautiously, bow drawn. When he enters the room, he gives a puzzled look at the corpses. "Well, they did a nice job cleaning up after themselves, didn't they? Now, what was this hunch you two had?"

Also, assuming that the area is safe and no combat is clearly imminent, when Gareth sees the chain shirts available, he will examine it and say "You guys mind if I change into something a little more durable real fast?" He will then take off his leather armor and replace it with the chain shirt. New AC: 18, Touch: 14, FF: 14

Jamors detects magic all the way from the courtyard to the basement. In the basement, He first looks around puzzlingly at the vanishing footprints (they stop abruptly?!) and he searches the desk and dresser for any handwritten material of interest.

If this fortress was garrisoned by the Mithral Guard, Caladrius points to the equipment lying around. It is probably because there is an entrance into the network of escape tunnels around Silverkeep. The problem is that if you can get out of a tunnel, you can also get into it. We need to find the tunnel.

Put those down! Caladrius scolds Jamros as he begins to search the commander's room, shooing out anyone who tries to enter. Perception to see if anything in this room was disturbed or removed by whoever killed all the guards: (Take 20 for 31).

Gareth finishes donning his new armor and gives it a few pats. "A nice fit. If anything a little snug, but plenty of wiggle room to go around. This'll do."

Gareth then joins the search, thinking out loud, "Okay, so where would they put a network of tunnels? They wouldn't put them in the barracks. There's too much foot traffic in there. It would be somewhere else... where people aren't allowed as often." He runs off to the commander's room and starts searching: 1d20 - 2 ⇒ (20) - 2 = 18

In particular he looks under the ornamental rug and inside the chests for clues. If he doesn't find anything in the first couple minutes or so, he will grab one of the books about swordplay and start to thumb through it.

Despite Caladrius's protests, both Gareth and Martin explore the commander's room. You spot a faint curve of dust on the ground in the commander's quarters, just in front of the wardrobe. It appears as though the wardrobe can be swung outward.

Caladrius has been sitting on this information for a while without posting, so I'm just revealing it to all now.

Gareth eventually manages to pry the wardrobe away from the wall, after much effort. The stone wall it covered looks a lot like the rest of the walls in this basement, save for a small indentation at chest height (for a human, that is) in the shape of a badge.

Beneath the indentation, a brief phrase has been carved into the stone. It is in tiny print, so you'll have to get really close to read it.

Detect Magic:

As you watch Gareth struggle with the wardrobe, you see a magical aura grow weaker and weaker until it finally vanishes, just as the wardrobe swings away from the wall. The phrase and indentation both radiate moderately-poweful auras.

Come on, of course the Mithril Guard knows explosive runes. Also depending on how long this all takes, Caladrius is still performing his search on the desk.

Yea, yea, over there... he waves his hand in the vague direction of the door as the others notice it. At Pygrado's question he actually looks up. Right here. he tosses the badge to Pygrado before leaning down and checking the alignment of the papers on the desk again.

Pygrado presses the badge against the indentation, and with a loud grinding sound, the section of wall swings open to reveal a darkened, downward-sloping passageway. "Enter, Guardsman," booms a deep, baritone voice.

Caladrius:

Perception:1d20 + 11 ⇒ (9) + 11 = 20

The papers appear to have been ruffled through, but there is no indication that any have been taken or of what someone might have taken. The papers mostly consist of reports of goblin and bandit activity to the southeast.

Pygrado:

You find no traps. The passageway ahead of you slopes downward, lit by a single torch ahead of you. It has a dirty cobblestone pathway down its center.

Wow, good job at posting everyone
Watching Gareth undo the wardrobe, Martin glances behind his shoulder and shouts,
"Hey Caladrius, how did you know about these tunnels?"

As Pygrado inputs the badge, Martin attempts to protect his eyes with his newly acquired shield, but once it's evident that it is not rigged to explode, he lets his guard down.

Turning to face the yound assasin, Martin says, "I don't like it either, but you know Gareth is right. We've got to do something, otherwise the dwarves have already won. I think it would be best to try and not fight them, but just get past them to the city first. I mean, if there really is a huge number of them, they can't be moving that fast."

Again shouting over his shoulder, "Hey Caladrius, do you know the best way through the tunnels?"

You suspect that the tunnel proceeds more or less directly towards Silverkeep, but that there are probably some intersections with other areas and paths that lead to different places in the mines. All of these areas are likely contained within some of the restricted areas of the mine system, so the diggers likely weren't as concerned with limiting intersections with other paths as they were with designing a quick and efficient escape route for the royal family.

You proceed down the tunnel. Jamros detects no magic in the tunnel's structure - it appears that the tunnel was excavated and designed using mundane methods. He does, however, spy a faint magical aura emanating from the torch.

Spellcraft DC 18:

The aura is of evocation (light), most likely from a continual flame spell.

It is very dark down here, and only the one torch (D12) casts light beyond that trickling in from the commander's quarters.

Jamros' pebbles fly down the tunnel, providing additional illumination. The tunnel continues its gradual downward slope, and seems to remain about twenty feet wide. No other creatures or life forms appear at all, save for the mushrooms that grow here and there. It is readily apparent that the dwarves came this way, however, as muddy footprints have been tracked as far as you can see.

Gareth scans the area. "Well, looks like our hunch was right. We need to be on the lookout for scouts they've sent to guard their backs. In fact, if that torch is still burning, they shouldn't be too far ahead of us. Would it make sense to send someone ahead to scout for us?"